Part 5

Some of the bigger fishing-boats we passed were most interesting, and looked, on a small scale, exactly like my imagination of what an old Egyptian boat must have been. The six oars (one can hardly call them oars in our sense of the word, for they are thick, and much the same shape from end to end, and with a little twist in them) were manned each by three naked men, all standing clad in their skins (which the scorching hot sun had burnt a lovely brown gold colour), and with the minutest white-and-blue waist cloth. Round their heads they had a white or white-and-blue towel tied fillet fashion, with a bow on one side. As they bent and rose over the oars they shouted all the time and very hoarsely a sort of meaningless refrain--but it was very good for keeping time and could be heard a long way off. Of the three oars on each side of the ships, two were pulled one way and one the other, and as the pullers kept forgetting which was which, I could not understand how the boats ever progressed, but they did, and at a pretty good speed, but far out at sea they put up sails. My little boat tried a sail for a short time. It was nearly square, with a bamboo to keep it out at each end, but the peg which held it down gave out when a puff of wind came and the boat tipped over gaily. The mast was tied in a very primitive fashion, and I wondered how the fishermen ever dared to go out to sea in such a craft. It landed us safely, however. One coal mine we went to was high up, 700 feet straight up from the sea, and amid pretty scenery. At one mine, where the people were most kind, they had gone to the extent of carrying a tea-cup with a handle for me, because they said I could not use their kind without a handle (as though I never drank out of glasses), but the owner of the mine took off all his English clothes, down to the shortest shirt I have ever seen, which was open up the back, and did not think I might find _that_ a little more difficult to put up with than a cup without a handle. It is a good thing that I had all the up-to-date ideas of hygiene before I came!

=October 19.=--To-day was spent in returning to the main island of Kiushiu, for the little ship took nine to ten hours about it. The start to-day was made in good time, so that three separate sets of people were late, and the steamer stopped to take them on one by one. A skiff came along propelled by three boards pulled up from the bottom of the boat, and left us two passengers. In order to get to the north of this small island of Amakusa, though only 25 miles or so from the south of the island, I must go back to the main island, to Mogi, and take another steamer back to the northern port of Amakusa!--multiplying the distance a hundred-fold, but there seems nothing else to do, it is impossible (they assert) to go on foot, and very dangerous to go in a small boat round the coast, and no steamer runs. The chief manager of the mines, who has some in the north and some in the south, has to go this ridiculous round every time he goes between them.

As the northern mines are the same formation and contain identical specimens with those I have collected in sufficient quantity in the south, I shall not return, it is too ridiculous and too expensive of time.

=October 20.=--I reached Nagasaki and found Mr. G---- (the half Japanese son of a Scotchman and an important person here) most kind. He arranged for a delightful steam-launch all to myself to take me to Takashima, a small island which exists for, and is entirely populated by, the coal-mining people, to whom it belongs.

The mine was the first opened in Japan, and was for some time owned by Mr. G----’s father; it is the most completely arranged I have yet seen, probably owing to its age, but is rather dangerous to work, as it goes miles under the sea, and there is a large quantity of gas. Last year 300 men were killed in it--I was on the very spot where the chief engineer was found dead.

There is another little island very near to it, with a coast-line of only 4000 feet and a population of 2500! It also has a mine which is entirely under the sea. If the little islands had not stuck up out of the sea to show where the coal lay hid below it, Japan would have been much the poorer. As well as working huge quantities, the quality of this coal is the best they have. They must use salt water, of course, so they combine their engine work with salt making, and thus make a lot of money, as well as provide their thousands of people with distilled water for domestic purposes. It was very funny to go only a couple of yards from the black coal sacks to the great room filled with snowy salt.

In the evening I went to dinner with the G----s, and then they took me to a kind of semi-amateur theatrical performance at the theatre. About 3000 people were in the theatre, very crowded, and nearly all sitting on the floor in the little divisions corresponding to boxes, but which fill practically all the space of a Japanese theatre. The only amusing thing--except the spectators themselves--was a huge dragon made to move and wriggle by a dozen men, and which darted in and out after a golden ball--it depends on some legend or other which I have not yet learned.

=October 21.=--Mrs. G---- saw me off at the station and brought butter and fruit, and the largest pear I have ever seen in my life, which is most delicious. A prospect of two nights and three days before reaching Tokio.

=October 22.=--As this train only stops about every fifty miles or so, and we have to pay extra for its being an express, there are relatively few passengers, and none of them at all amusing except one old man, whom I take to be a Chinaman. He is tall and dressed in widest garments, the trousers being of such flowing description that he hitches them up behind when he walks, as a lady does her skirts. He has an amber-coloured silk jacket, slashed up the front, and into this and the front of his lower garments he has stuffed so many things that he looks very rotund, which he isn’t by nature. His long hair is done on the top of his head inside a little fine gauze hat, with a band under his chin, and he wears enormous brown horn spectacles attached to the hat.

He smokes a pipe a yard long, and sits all day, with his swathed feet crossed Buddha fashion, on a brilliant cerise-pink blanket. He cannot speak a word of Japanese, but can of course write Chinese, so that when any one wants his ticket or anything from him it must be written down, or else his three attendants sent for. The attendants are travelling third class, two in a costume like his, but simpler, the third in a European knicker-suit combined with a similar gauze hat! Here we see Chinese _writing_ acting as a medium of communication between these people, who cannot understand a word of the other’s spoken language.

=October 23.=--I am surprised how well I sleep in these rackety trains--but the East is very soporific. Much of the scenery is pretty, particularly the hilly distances. Indeed, most of Japan seems to be beautiful. I am spending the day reading through the dictionary, a word here and there sticks and is useful sometimes. It is awful to be so entirely without literature--nothing is obtainable but character Japanese, of which, of course, I cannot read a word, and I have had nothing to read for weeks on these tedious journeyings. This express train is quite good, and there is an excellent luncheon car attached.

=October 24.=--A day spent at the Institute seeing after letters, etc., which of course have all been awaiting my return. I also received congratulatory and other visits from several people. They seem to think it some wonderful thing that I go _into_ the mines! At Nagasaki, the trouble I had to escape interviewers! Two telephoned up for permission to see me, two came to the hotel, and I refused to see them, and one followed me to the station, and though I used some insulting Japanese to him, he bought a ticket and followed me to the train. I wouldn’t speak a word to him, so I guess very unfavourable comments appeared.

=October 25.=--A very full day, which I began by calling on the Vice-Minister of Education, to whom an official call has long been due. Once more I had to grieve over the poverty and bad taste of the European furniture with which so many official Japanese are replacing their own simple and dignified arrangements.

I then went to a Faculty lunch at the University--to-day being the day when all the professors of the Science College meet and lunch together. Through the week the other colleges and faculties have their day. I met many friendly people, Professor _S----_ being particularly charming. The dining-hall is in Japanese style, but tables and food European. The floor mats being Japanese, we must take off our boots and patter about in slippers, which are all made of one size and belong to the University. I can’t keep them on, and people are always fetching me new ones when I quietly discard an importunate pair.

The Minister of Education has this year started a sort of Academy of Pictures, and gave me an invitation for the private view. There were three sections, Japanese paintings proper, oils after the manner of foreigners, and sculpture. The latter very bad; the two former sections, though containing only about a couple of hundred exhibits, yet had a larger number of beautiful things than our Academy ever shows. The selection had been very careful, eight out of every ten rejected, and each hung with at least 1 foot of wall space all round it, and nothing skied!

=October 26.=--A party from the Botanical Institute went on a botanical excursion to Nikko, a very renowned and lovely district about 2000 feet above the sea. The temples there are marvellous, and the whole region one of the “three places” of Japan, and so well known and often described that I shall not attempt to give any account of its technical glories. A few things struck me specially, but the glorious carving and gilding and rich beauty of the temples I am not qualified to describe. In the temple I specially liked the Sacred Horse. Dear beast (he is alive, of course), he had been at the war and come through safely, but his rider, a prince of the Imperial house, who had been a High Priest up to the dis-establishment of the priesthood, was killed. The horse now lives in his beautiful dwelling in the temple, and is fed by the faithful on beans, which are sold at a farthing a dish. It seems so cruel to give him such small helpings at a time that I gave him half a dozen simultaneously, and so the keeper-priest gave me a picture of this animal in all his sacred trappings.

One of the principal glories of the temples is the magnificent avenue of giant cryptomeria trees,--an avenue more than 20 miles long, all planted 300 years ago by a single Daimio. Along the turbulent stony river a quiet paved path runs beneath tall trees, and beside it are many little shrines and temples. On the hill above, with a great flight of stone steps leading to it, is the tomb of the first great Shogun, a man in his time mightier than the Mikado. The stones used in the building of the steps and foundations are enormous, and one wonders how it was possible to engineer them 300 years ago. Now it would be almost an impossibility to build in such a grand style. Close to the temples is the small Alpine garden belonging to the University, and really a branch of the Tokio Botanical Garden. It is small, but charming, with many little streams and rocky pinnacles on which the alpine plants are growing, and from it is a splendid view of the fine hills beyond. Every tourist goes to Nikko, and every book on Japan describes it, so I need say nothing.

=October 27.=--We continued on foot up the hills to Chuzenji, a large lake about 4500 feet up--the steep valleys up which we went were quite indescribably glorious, with the autumnal colourings of the maples and other trees.

Crimson and scarlet, chrome, ochre, vermilion and orange, gold and copper coloured trees, covering the grey rocks and massed against a sapphire sky. Such magnificence of colouring was beyond all imagination--and was indeed a “botanical lesson.” We passed several notable waterfalls, one of which had a particularly interesting geological structure.

=October 28.=--We returned down to Nikko and took the train to Tokio. Though it is sad to leave their beauty we are glad to get back to warmth, for the lovely heights were very cold.

=October 29.=--The day was spent at the Institute and paying official calls. The fossil cutting-machine is going on splendidly. Professor _F----_ is showing engineering genius in getting its house built.

=October 30.=--I was at work at the Institute all day, chiefly writing letters to try to catch up the arrears. Late in the afternoon I called at the Embassy, and found that the Ambassador is a very genial man, who professes to be interested in fossils and asks permission to come and see them. Will he, I wonder?

=November 1.=--A glorious sunny day, which lured me out from my room in the Institute, and made me take my book to the little grove of pine trees by the Laboratory, where I lay in the sun, as solitary as in the middle of a forest--the blue sky above as brilliant as one can imagine it.

=November 2.=--All to-day was spent in moving to my new rooms, which are both upstairs, and open out of each other in the convenient Japanese fashion, and as I am planning to sleep on the true Japanese quilts (which are put away during the day), I shall have two reception rooms, or one big drawing-room, at will. Along the rooms is a broad verandah, so that, as the partitions can be moved between it and the rooms, I have quite a lot of space if I like to give a party.

=November 3.=--I am increasingly charmed with my rooms. The hostess is so friendly and nice, and the five dogs keep us so safe from robbers that I can have all my walls and windows open at night if I like.

I looked out on to my little Japanese garden this morning and saw my host with a watering-can, but the hasty conclusion which an Englishman would come to, that he was watering the plants, was wide of the mark--he was watering the stones, which are carefully chosen to lie in an irregular fashion, and so simulate the rocky bed of a little stream. There is also a pond in this garden, and a forest and a shrine, and the whole thing is not more than 30 feet square.

Dr. _H----_ took me to a _Nō_ performance. These are extremely interesting old plays, some of them written about 300 years ago, and they are still acted in the same way as they were originally. The intonation (which is most peculiar), dresses, steps, even the movements of the hands, are all according to prescribed rules, and all so highly specialised and conventionalised that it is hard even for most Japanese to understand them. The arrangements of stage, actors, chairs, musicians, etc. remind one partly of the old Greek plays and partly of the original Shakespearean style of acting. There is no scenery, but one pine tree and a few necessary implements; the music-makers and chorus sit on the stage at the back and side, and chant in unison with the “dancing” (which by the way is a series of slow and very stiff poses, not dancing at all in our sense of the word). The stage is square, and projects out so that the audience sit on three sides of it.

The performance began at 9 in the morning, but I was there soon after half-past eight to see the audience come in. There was no artificial light, and as it poured with rain it was at times rather dark, and the rain came in in places. I left at 3.30 and it was still going on--not being over till 4.30. This was not all one piece, but a series of about six short plays, each representing only one incident or situation, and quite disconnected. As the Japanese themselves do not fully understand it without years of study, I could not expect to, but was most interested nevertheless. Mr. Poel would have enjoyed it vastly, for, as he considers should be the case with great literature, nearly all scenery and such things are left to the imagination, and the whole interest of the audience centres in the principal actor’s words. It is impossible to describe this fully, the _Nō_ is totally different from the Japanese theatre proper, and is only visited by refined or highly-cultured people, who study it deeply. Dr. _Mk----_, who was to interpret for me, went to sleep! Dr. _H----_ has studied the pieces for years and knows them well, but can explain very little to me about them. All the pieces are contained in half a dozen volumes, and therefore the study is a possible one, just as the study of Shakespeare is possible, but may take a lifetime. None of the pieces are less than 150 years old.

To-day was the Mikado’s birthday, and pouring wet!

=November 4–8.=--An uneventful week in Tokio, doing little, but spending a lot of time and energy thereon. On the 8th (Friday) I lunched once more with the Science Faculty at the Goten, and was treated most kindly. There are, naturally, no other women there, but I sit between the President and the Dean, and have quite a good time.

=November 9.=--The King’s Birthday and gloriously fine! I had luncheon with the P----s, and went with them to the Ambassador’s garden party, where we sat on the lawn and ate ices and strolled about. Numerous ambassadors, princes, and ministers, and other big-wigs were on show, some wearing massive decorations. The ball-room was open, and at about 4.30 we began to dance. Several Japanese in European costume danced, but the prettiest Japanese ladies were those who wore their own lovely ceremonial dress, which is far more dignified than ours.

I had dinner out, and then went to a dance in the evening, where the belle of the ball was a girl whose father was English and mother was Japanese. She had such lovely shoulders that I longed to be a man and marry her.

=November 10.=--I stopped all night with the P----s. Poor Professor P---- had to go off somewhere at 6 in the morning. As one can hear a whisper from one room in the next, of course it woke me up, but I was glad, because the sunrise was one of magically lovely clear tints, that I have never seen out of Japan, and it shed a fairy radiance on glowing crimson maple and golden _Ginkgo_ trees.

In the afternoon we had tea with Professor _M----_ and Professor _F----_. The latter took me to the famous popular shows of chrysanthemums, where the chief feature is the life-size models of actors and theatre scenes, all made of millions of minute flowering chrysanthemums still _growing_, the red skirt, white sleeves or golden shield all being masses of self-coloured flowers. The effect is, of course, simply curious, and an evidence of gardener’s skill--not pretty. Some of the other exhibits were huge plants, with a “thousand” blooms (really 300–400) all simultaneously open, and other plants with every imaginable kind of chrysanthemum growing from one main stem, a triumph of grafting, but not of beauty.

=November 15.=--A quiet day’s work, and in the late afternoon tea at the British Embassy. In the evening an invitation “by order of the Emperor” arrived for the Imperial garden party at Akasaka Palace. It was amusing to see the awe with which my landlady viewed it--the Imperial Crest being almost sacred in this country. She took it in her hands as a good Catholic might a piece of the true cross, and raised it three times to her forehead, and asked leave to take it to show her husband. I shine from the reflected glory.

=November 16.=--The morning was spent at the Institute, and then the afternoon at the lovely house and garden of Professor _S----_. It is a very large and beautifully unspoiled Japanese garden of the old style. The maple trees were red and the pines green--and here and there among them were bushes bearing the loveliest fresh pink and crimson roses. October and November are called by some “the little Spring,” and these rose bushes might well be those of June with us. The scent of the roses is not so sweet as with us, but the texture of the petals more delicate, so that they have a wonderful semi-transparency, which ours seldom attain.

=November 19.=--The Emperor’s garden party took place to-day, and was attended by numerous Princes and Princesses, Ambassadors, Ministers and the “élite of Tokio Society.” Americans flock by the hundred, as their Ambassador asks invitations for them, and as they have no court and “all men are equal,” some very queer ones come. The other nations resent it, and the English Ambassador is particularly strict, so that _very_ few English can come--unless they hold some official position with the Japanese Government. My scientific mission secured me the much-coveted invitation, and I am right glad I went, for the palace gardens were extremely lovely. They are in the best style of landscape gardening, and are most extensive. The glowing crimson of the Japanese maple, and the golden of the _Ginkgo_ showed up brilliantly against the many green pines; small waterfalls and lakes abound, and I think we must have walked nearly half a mile before reaching the point where the show of chrysanthemums and the meeting of the guests took place. The chrysanthemums were very much like those at the popular shows, but of course rather finer, and were spoiled by being tied to straight sticks and arranged symmetrically. Some had enormous numbers of flowers, 800 or so from a single plant and all flowering simultaneously. The flowers were arranged like the jets of a huge candelabra, and in one way were most effective, but the people were by far the most interesting part of the entertainment. The Empress was a little indisposed, so we had to be content with the Crown Prince and Princess and a train of minor Princes and Princesses. The Empress has, unfortunately, made European dress compulsory at all Court functions, so that most Japanese ladies do not come, and those who do are got up in garments which they do not thoroughly understand and therefore cannot wear with grace. Also they go hopelessly wrong in choosing the colours. And as to hats! But this cannot be an article on millinery. The quaintest lady there was in early Victorian costume--a hat like a Cambridge pork pie and a skirt of rusty brown, that was hooped and looped up like those our mothers wore when they were young.

Her husband was equally pathetic. She was a great contrast to the rest of them, who were in ultra fashionable and befeathered robes, of a style unknown to our “élite.”

The quaintest gentleman there was in a top hat of prehistoric date, a frock-coat which showed every seam, and sand-shoes! And he was a high official, who doubtless in his beautiful native dress looked dignified and inspired respectful admiration.

When it came to feeding I was surprised to find that the Imperial allowance was but one plate each, and on this the guests put ham, tongue, and chicken, jelly, rolls, and ice-cream, sweets and cakes, and ate them indiscriminately; even my English knights did not hesitate to bring me jelly, ice-cream, sandwiches and cakes on one plate. There was champagne galore, and beautiful cut-glass glasses, which one appreciates in this land where glass is so expensive and bad, and where most glass articles of everyday use at home are not obtainable. (This reminds me that I have spent a fortnight hunting for a little glass jug and cannot get one.) Admiral Togo was the most impressive figure there, shorter than most of the Japanese, thick-set and upright, and conversing with very few people. Baron Kikuchi remembered me, which, as he saw me for only half an hour five months ago, speaks much for his social gifts. As he came up smiling, and waited for me to speak, I remembered him, for he is quite unlike any other Japanese I have ever seen.